Capital Volume 2, Chapter 19: Former Presentations of the Subject

Despite the title of the chapter, its contents almost exclusively refer to what Marx called ‘[Adam] Smith’s dogma’, that is, the widely held classical political economic view that that the price of commodities, and hence that of the total social product, is entirely ‘resolved’ into ‘revenue’, i.e. into wages, profit and rent (a resolution which excludes constant capital). As Marx wrote to Engels in 1863 (when he was working on a draft of material that was to form a part of volume 2):

You know that according to Adam Smith, the ‘natural price’ or ‘necessary price’ is composed of wages, profit (interest), rent – and is thus entirely resolved into revenue. […]. Nearly all economists have accepted this from Smith […]. According to this, society would have to start afresh, without capital, every year.

Marx’s famous reproduction schemes, which appear in the following two chapters, are based in good part on his refutation of this ‘dogma’.